Breast cancer is one of the highest incidences among cancers in women. Breast cancer also has wide variations in the clinical and pathological features, which are taken into account for treatment planning, and to predict survival rates or treatment outcomes. Thermography is being used for breast imaging with the advent of high resolution thermal cameras. Thermography offers a radiation free and non-contact approach to breast imaging unlike the typically used mammography, which uses X-rays that have a risk of causing cancer if used frequently and is painful due to a lot of pressure used in breast compression. Thermography is also invariant to breast density unlike mammography which has a low sensitivity to breast cancer detection in women with dense breast tissues. Thermography detects the temperature increase in malignancy due to the increased metabolism of cancer and due to the additional blood ow generated for feeding the malignant tumors. The present invention is directed to this ongoing effort.
Accordingly, what is needed in this art are sophisticated systems and methods for breast cancer screening which determines whether hot spots, as seen in a thermal image of both breasts, can be classified as being possibly malignant based on a determined measure of symmetry.